Watch - Owen Smith tells crowd he would negotiate with ISIS

Owen Smith has declared that he would consider negotiations with ISIS. He made the comments during a debate with leadership rival Jeremy Corbyn on the Victoria Derbyshire show aired on the BBC, from Nottingham.

His comments will shock many, but his point was that eventually the only way Ireland managed to find peace was through negotiating or back channeling.Smith said he was part of this process and at some point the British Government would have to talk to the terrorist group. Unsurprisingly, many of the families of people murdered by the IRA were strongly opposed to negations with the outlawed republican terrorist group.

However, he conceded that at the moment they have no desire to talk to western Governments. Their intention appears to continue terror attacks across the Muslim world and in Western countries.

The recent horrific lorry attack in Nice was claimed to by IS along with many other horrific incidents.

Interestingly Jeremy Corbyn said he wouldn’t talk to IS, and he was adamant that this was his position. Commenting after the debate, Mr Corbyn’s campaign team called Mr Smith’s comments on IS “hasty and ill-considered”.

Later Smith defended his comments and said that there was no possibility of talking to IS now, but at some stage in the future he hoped they could, to bring to an end the murderous violence carried out by the group or people acting alone but on their behalf.

Joe is a freelance journalist who writes news and features for national newspapers and a variety of magazine titles. He studied Economics and Politics at the University of Manchester and also has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.